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enemies?   So why to shoot him up if his information was false?   Nobody had a real answer to anything.
    He'd told his questioners almost everything he knew.   He'd only held back the name of his major source.   They hadn't been happy, but they'd understood.   If they didn't know, they couldn't leak the information and threaten the existence of an asset they might want to use again.   After the disaster of the Bay of Pigs, American agents and contacts in Cuba were few and far between.
    Kraeger swung his legs over the edge of the hospital bed.   He tried not to disturb the IV contraption that was pumping his body with fluids and medicine.   He was hungry as hell, but still couldn't swallow or chew and the mush he was allowed to eat nauseated him.   Another day or two, the nurse had told him, and his throat could handle scramble eggs.   Screw that, he thought.   He wanted a steak, a big fat thick and rare steak.
    He also wanted to wear real clothes and not the ridiculous backwards facing shirt that bared his ass to the world when he stood.   Patience, the head nurse had said.   He was in excellent shape and recovering quickly and thoroughly.   She joked that maybe he shouldn't smoke for a few months until the oil cleared his body lest he set himself on fire.   He didn't think it was all that funny, but the nurse did.   He wanted a cigarette.
    Patience, hell, he wanted to know what was happening to the information he'd brought home.   It had almost cost him his life and he thought that others had died as well, and he wanted to know that his efforts had been worth it.
    The door to his room opened and Jock Soriano, one of his fellow agents and a longtime good buddy walked in and sat down on the edge of the bed.   The name Jock came from the fact that he was powerfully built, like the six-foot, two hundred-thirty pound linebacker he'd once been at Notre Dame.   He liked to pretend he had nothing between his ears in order to get people to underestimate him.   Kraeger often wished he had a trick like that up his sleeve.  
    Instead of the usual cheerful grin, Soriano looked grim.   "Shit's hitting the fan, Charley.   You feel up to a trip?"
    "Where to?" Kraeger rasped.   "Somewhere nice or oblivion?"
    Soriano finally smiled.   "More than you deserve, jerk-off.   How about up north in that truly weird city on the Potomac named after our first president.   McCone wants to talk to you in person."
    "I'm overwhelmed," Kraeger said and he was.   Someone was listening to him.   "Am I well enough to travel?"
    "Not really, according to the doctors.   So we're putting you on a private plane along with a medic to hold your bandaged hand.   It'll be a guy, so don't let him hold anything else.   And that's a lot of money being spent for a worthless, middle-aged, agent like you.   And yeah, you do get to wear real clothes, although I'd give a month's pay to see you running across a runway in Washington with your ass hanging out of that shirt."                                                 

 
    Chapter Three
     
    Second Lieutenant Andrew Ross was not impressed with his new command, and had the feeling they weren't all that impressed with him.   But what the hell, it wasn't like they were going to be together for a long time.   A day or two at the most out in the boonies would be about it.  
    The twenty men were fine, of course, but the site they were to guard or protect was anything but inspiring.
    His defensive position was a small concrete bunker just off a road facing north to Castro’s Cuba.   The bunker was one of a number built during the past couple of months and could hold a dozen men and came complete with a World War II vintage Browning .50 caliber machine gun that was aimed straight down the curving road and couldn't traverse very far at all.   He had no anti-tank weapons and no mortars, only a score of guys armed with M1 Garand rifles that also were old